A July 3 Chronicle of Higher Education article by Liam Knox [2] recounts how Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) ignited a firestorm when she compared U.S. detention centers for illegal immigrants to (presumably Nazi) concentration camps. The radical wing of the Democrat party applauded while conservatives asserted that the comparison was specious and cynical.
The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum weighed in, saying it “unequivocally rejects efforts to create analogies between the Holocaust and other events, whether historical or contemporary.”
Responding to the museum, “scholars” launched an open letter which had collected almost 600 signatures by the time of Knox’s article. The signers justified the comparison because “The very core of Holocaust education is to alert the public to dangerous developments that facilitate human rights violations and pain and suffering; pointing to similarities across time and space is essential for this task.”
I find this to be a dubious, arrogant, and disingenuous proposition.
I found myself asking, “Scholars of what?” Law? Gender, Race, and Identity? Music? Social Work? Art? And what sort of a qualification is it to be a “scholar” of something? Holocaust deniers often describe themselves as scholars….
The Economist has just published an article decrying the decline of history as an academic discipline.[1] Dwight R. Lee, a respected econonomist who is also known as a witty popularizer, offers a comment.
First, the excerpt from the Economist ‘s July 20, 2019, “Bagehot” column:
“Even as history itself has become more dramatic, the study of history has shrivelled. The number reading it at university has declined by about a tenth in the past decade.
“At the same time, the historical profession has turned in on itself. Historians spend their lives learning more and more about less and less, producing narrow PhDs and turning them into monographs and academic articles, in the hamster-wheel pursuit of tenure and promotion. . . .
“And historians increasingly devote themselves to subjects other than great matters of state: the history of the marginal rather than the powerful, the poor rather than the rich, everyday life rather than Parliament. . . . These fashions were a valuable corrective to an old-school history that focused almost exclusively on the deeds of white men, particularly politicians. But they have gone too far. Indeed, some historians almost seem to be engaged in a race to discover the most marginalised subject imaginable.”
Dwight Lee responds:
I don’t know much about what most academic historians do, but I suspect the Economist has described them pretty accurately, and I doubt there is much difference between the British and American variety. Furthermore, I don’t think I am all that biased in my view because my criticism applies in general, if not in particular cases, to academic economists.
I used to say that if someone asked me what they should do to acquire some broad information about economics I would tell them the last thing they should do is take a college economics class, with exceptions of course. What I would suggest is to read some books by journalists who are not overly ideological and who have the ability to write well. For example, The Rational Optimist by Matt Ridley; Knowledge and theWealth of Nations: A Story of Economic Discovery by David Warsh; and Keynes and Hayek: The Clash that Defined Modern Economics by Nicholas Wapshott. And let’s not forget Economics in One Lesson by Henry Hazlitt and “The Petition” and other works by Frédéric Bastiat. All these authors are journalists who learned some economics. (Also there is Common Sense Economics,[2] to which a journalist I know made a huge contribution.)
[1] “Bagehot: The End of History,” Economist 432, no. 9152. (July 20, 2019), 24. (Behind a paywall.)
[2] Authors are James D. Gwartney, Richard L. Stroup, Dwight R. Lee, Tawni Ferrarini, and Joseph P. Calhoun.
Note: During the summer, I won’t be adding my own posts (I have to build up an inventory for the fall), but will be linking frequently to others’ articles about history. (And there are more links in the righthand column.)
Norman Rockwell, disdained by art critics, loved by many Americans, was the person who made FDR’s speech about “freedom from fear itself” famous. Before that, Roosevelt’s 1941 inaugural speech was a dud. Brian T. Allen writes the first of two articles on “Normal Rockwell, Realist” in National Review.
Great Britain’s Queen Victoria was born May 24, 1819, became queen at age 18, and ruled for over 60 years. For the 200th anniversary of her birth, BBC’s History Extra tells many stories about the woman for whom an era was named. One feature is about whether she was pretty or not.
Lighten up, and read about “16 Facts that Will Warp Your Perception of Time” in the Reader’s Digest. For example, the tenth president of the United States, John Tyler, has living grandchildren.
Jeffrey A. Tucker compares today’s effort to bring back protectionism to the counter-revolutionary processes at work just before World War I, when the state began to grow after a century of increasing freedom. On AIER.
Naomi Schaefer Riley of the Wall Street Journalinterviews Wilfred McClay, author of a new history book, Land of Hope: An Invitation to the Great American Story (article is subscriber-only).
Ross Douthat compares The Avengers to Gothic cathedrals. In National Review.
Rebecca Onion attacks David McCullough’s new book. Pioneers, as the kind of book you find at Costco and Target but not in academe. On Slate.
Until a few months ago, I had never heard of William McNeill, a historian who died in 2016 at the age of 98. In my class in world history, I came across his book The Rise of the West, an 828-page volume published in 1963.[1] Not only did it receive the prestigious National Book Award in 1964, but it was extremely successful—even a popular Christmas gift. For historians, its significance is that it expanded thinking about world history away from a narrow view based on Europe and the United States.
That accomplishment is ironic because the book itself, a wonderful treasure trove of information about the entire world, looks somewhat old-fashioned and out of date now. But it’s still fascinating.
The title would never fly today. The Rise of the West sounds like just what McNeill was combating: Eurocentrism. His narrative starts with the origins of humans in the African savannahs and ends in the year 1917 with the Russian Revolution). It unabashedly celebrates the “era of Western dominance,” which began around 1500 and hadn’t ended by the book’s conclusion (or, for that matter, by the end of McNeill’s life).
In academia these days, you can get into trouble for what you say. Megan Neely, a Duke assistant professor in biostatistics, lost an administrative position for pleading with Chinese students to speak more English—for the sake of their careers. Calling them out (in an email) was considered insensitive. Jeffrey McCutcheon, an associate professor at the University of Connecticut, had to apologize for suggesting that students who claimed excessive test anxiety (and thus sought special accommodation) might simply be unprepared rather than suffering from a disability.[1] That too was considered insensitive.
Until now, I have been fairly comfortable writing about history. True, I’ve found some words you shouldn’t use, such as “barbarians,” but that’s okay with me. We don’t have to echo the Romans or their prejudices. But here’s one I’m beginning to wonder about: “universal.”
A couple of months ago in class, I said (all too confidently) that some human tendencies can explain similarities between the history of one region and that of another. The explanation doesn’t have to be that the regions were connected through trade or other contact. I gave a few examples: governments tend to grow; people tend to rebel; knowledge accumulates; cultural similarities tend to support territorial consolidation, etc.
I was criticized (by another student) for “universalizing.”
